Authorities have confirmed they have new updates on the kidnapping of Morgan Nick in Arkansas, a case which has been linked with the disappearance of Melissa Witt in 1994.
On Monday, Alma City Police said that they had “significant developments” on the Nick case. Alma Police Department Chief Jeff Pointer said his department would hold a media briefing at 10:30 a.m. on October 1 to share the update.
Nick’s case bears several similarities to the disappearance and murder of Witt, who went missing a few months before Nick, in a nearby city. Witt’s body was later found 50 miles from where she disappeared.
Investigation
Due to the similarities in the cases and the locations where they were reported, authorities investigating the disappearances have often collaborated during their work.
FBI and local police worked together in the initial stages of the Witt investigation, and according to ABC documentary At Witt’s End: The Hunt for a Killer, a lead in Witt’s case led to a breakthrough in the Nick case.
Morgan Nick (left) and Melissa Witt (right). Both girls went missing within a few months of each other in Arkansas.
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children / Who Killed Missy Witt
The sharing of intelligence for these cases was due to the short distance and time frame between the two disappearances. Nick was first reported missing on June 9 1995, when she was last seen at a Little League baseball game with two of her friends in a parking lot.
Witt disappeared in the same state less than a year before in 1994, when she was on her way to go bowling with her mother.
Newsweek contacted the Alma city police for comment and for more information on the cases.
Location
Both Witt and Nick went missing in the state of Arkansas, and authorities investigating each case have worked closely together as a result.
Six-year-old Nick’s disappearance from Alma in June 1995 prompted a nationwide search. She was last seen when she left her mother to look for fireflies with her friends. When her friends returned, Nick was no longer with them, and they told police they saw a man with a red camper truck talking to her.
Witt, 19, was last seen alive in Fort Smith, less than a 20-minute drive away from Alma, and her body was later recovered at Ozark National Forest, a two-hour drive away. Witt was on her way to meet her mother when she went missing. Authorities found evidence of blood in her empty car, along with her belongings, scattered nearby.
Suspects
There were several suspects in the Melissa Witt case, with authorities considering Charles Ray Vines, also known as the River Valley Killer, because his criminal record included two murders in the 1990s in the area near where Witt had been killed. Vines died in 2019 without speaking to authorities about the murder.
Travis Crouch, who remains in prison due to an assault conviction in 1997, lived near Melissa at the time of the murder and was briefly considered a suspect, but authorities never connected him to any of the evidence.
In November 2021, Billy Jack Lincks was named as a person of interest in the Morgan Nick investigation, as he reportedly owned a truck similar to the one that was seen with the man Morgan spoke to before she disappeared. Lincks had died in 2000.
Nick’s mother founded the Morgan Nick Foundation the year after she went missing. The organization is a support network for parents and families of missing children, and pushes for legislation that protects the rights of children.
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